The Rest is Academic

Scott Erickson traditionally has begun the year sluggishly and finished with a flourish.

Coming into this year, he had a career 5-15 record and a 4.96 ERA in April, and a 21-8 mark with a 2.70 ERA in September.

But something different has happened this spring.  Erickson started four games for the Orioles in April and complied a 3-1 record, along with a glistening 2.96 ERA.  For the first time in his eight years in the big leagues, he won his first two decisions.  And in his final start in April, he pitched brilliantly, shutting out the Red Sox for eight innings on just three hits (Randy Myers sealed the 2-0 triumph with a save in the 9th).

The conventional wisdom on Erickson is that pitches best when he doesn't have too many days rest between starts.  A big, powerfully built right-hander at 6'4" and 230 pounds, Erickson, according to this theory, tends to overthrow the ball when he's well rested, thereby losing the bite on his bread-and-butter pitch, the sinker.  When he has little rest, his sinker breaks down sharply and induces batters to pound the ball into the ground.  On days when Erickson's sinker is most potent, infielders get most of the action, as was the case when he dominated the Red Sox on April 25.  He sailed through eight innings on just 85 pitches, and 17 of the 24 outs came on grounders.

Not coincidentally, he was pitching on only three days rest because Jimmy Key needed an extra day off to rest a stiff neck, and the two pitchers flip-flopped their turns in the rotation.

Erickson likes to pitch as much as he can and doesn't mind at all coming on just three days rest--in fact, he prefers it.

Yet he doesn't buy into the theory that others espouse for him, that his greatest successes follow short time between starts.

In fact, Erickson doesn't buy into too many theories at all about pitching--his or anyone else's.

A blunt, no-nonsense sort of guy, Erickson epitomizes the type of professional athlete who performs on sheer athletic instinct and talent.  He leaves the analysis to others.  When reporters ask him about why he pitches better on fewer days rest, or why he has been so successful in September, he usually scoffs at the notion that there is any substance behind such ideas.  He just goes out and throws the ball, he says, in essence.

And that is fine with Davey Johnson and Erickson's teammates, as long as he keeps winning, which he has done consistently since arriving in Baltimore from Minnesota in July of 1995.  As an Oriole he is 25-17, and if he can keep on the pace he set for himself this April, even the press might stop badgering him about the whys and wherefores of his pitching.